March 15, 2026
• Rev. Dr. Rob Fuquay
St. Luke’s UMC
March 15, 2025
Lent 4
Words from the Suffering
“Come Down from the Cross”
Mark 1:29-32a
Novelist Anne Rice, known for her horror novels about vampires, grew up in a pretty strict Roman Catholic environment. Daily Mass, lots of ritual, doctrinal education. She walked away from that at age 18 and became an atheist. She married a fellow atheist, and when their five-year-old daughter died of leukemia, that’s when Anne started writing.
Her first novel was Interview with a Vampire, a gory story that became a movie with Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and other stars. She went on to write a whole series of vampire novels and said she wrote them “without my being aware that they reflected my quest for meaning in a world without God.”
But then, many years later, she suddenly returned to her faith. She said,
In the moment of surrender, I let go of all the theological or social questions which had kept me from [God] for countless years. I simply let them go. There was the sense, profound and wordless, that if He knew everything I did not have to know everything, and that, in seeking to know everything, I’d been, all of my life, missing the entire point. No social paradox, no historic disaster, no hideous record of injustice or misery should keep me from Him.https://www.insights.uca.org.au/anne-rices-complicated-christianity/
The experience of suffering can put us on a windy journey, especially when it comes to our relationship with God. The journey probably won’t lead us to answers, or at least easy answers for why we suffer, but if it brings us closer to God, it will most likely be with a trust in a God who meets us in suffering. A meeting that usually happens at the cross.
So would such a meeting have ever been possible if Jesus would have complied with the requests of those who witnessed his crucifixion and shouted, “Come down from the cross”
Of course, that was no plea of pity or actual desire to see Jesus do that. It was a cry of contempt. For the religious leaders and others who gathered to jeer and taunt Jesus, his crucifixion was validation to them, validation that he was not who he said he was. For what kind of Messiah would be willing to suffer and die?
Now, we would never join in such taunts. Only the most heartless among us would make fun of a person while he is dying. But, could this statement put to voice some of our own thoughts and feelings about suffering? Have you ever endured a time of pain, and rather than wanting a God on a cross, you want a God who would eliminate pain? A God who prevents suffering? A God who displays his power by removing tragedy? Have you ever wanted to say to God, “Come down from the cross?
If we’re honest I’m sure we’ve all had times when we’ve said things like, “God, if you’re really there, take this suffering out of my life.” But what if God did? What if God showed His power by preventing us from ever suffering? What kind of faith would we have?
Probably the kind of faith that turns God into the great Problem-Solver. We would reduce God to being our divine Fixer. We would call on God only when we’re in crisis. Our faith would not have room for suffering.
But a faith that finds God in suffering is an enduring faith for sure.
In seminary, I had a guest lecturer one semester, Jurgen Moltmann. He was in the United States while taking a leave from his teaching at the University of Tubingen in Germany. He was known for his landmark book, Theology of Hope. But his hope came from a hopeless experience. While still a teenager he was conscripted to fight for the Nazis in World War II. He saw many horrors and had to live with the reality that he was on the side that carried out concentration camps. In 1945 he turned himself in to a British soldier and spent the next three years in a prison camp. It was during that time a chaplain put a copy of the Bible in his hand and he started reading. The understanding of a God who comes in person and dies for people, even the people who put him on the cross, was overpowering to him. The fact that Jesus did not come down from the cross meant that God understands what it means to feel forsaken and hopeless.
In his book, The Crucified God, he wrote this sentence that is one you will want to meditate on, so I encourage you to get your phone and take a picture of the screen so you have it. Moltman wrote, "On the cross, God is forsaken by God so that he can become the God of the God-forsaken." That is a statement worth pondering, and wherever it takes your thoughts, one thing is for sure, a God like that is one who does not come down from the cross.
Fred Craddock once preached a powerful sermon about this idea of Jesus not coming down from the cross. It was titled, “He Could Have but He Didn’t.” Jesus could have come down, but he didn’t. He told Pilate he could call on his heavenly Father to send an army of angels to fight for him, but he didn’t. He restrains his power. Craddock goes through one example after another in the Bible of God showing restraint of power. He told Adam and Eve that if they eat the forbidden fruit they will be expelled from the garden. But when they leave, God says, “Now wait, you need clothing, and God takes care of them”
When Cain killed his brother, God was angry. “Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground,” he told Cain. And God sent him away, but before he left he put a mark on Cain to let anybody know, he is still God’s child. Restraint.
God told Jonah to preach in Ninevah, that wicked city. “Tell them,” God said, “I am going to destroy this place in 40 days.” The people listened to Jonah and repented. And God didn’t destroy them. Restraint.
Jesus went through Samaria one day and the people shut him out. John and James wanted to call down fire from heaven but Jesus said, “No, let’s move on.” Restraint.
Craddock ends the sermon telling about a time he was invited to speak for a National Day of Prayer. That day is recognized not only in Washington but at US military bases and consulates around the world. Dr. Craddock was asked to speak at the event in Seoul, Korea. He was hosted by a 4-star general, General Richard Stilwell. The service was held. Craddock spoke, and after it was over and the room emptied, the general asked Dr. Craddock if he would keep them in his prayers. “Of course, I will,” said Dr. Craddock. “What would you like me to pray for?” The general said, “Don’t pray for more power. We have the power. We could destroy this whole place in one afternoon. Pray that we have the restraint appropriate.” (The Collected Sermons of Fred Craddock, p102)
Pray not for power, but the restraint of power. Power that looks like the cross.
Now what does that mean for us right now? What does a prayer like that mean in a time of war? If our war in Iran really is about making the world safer, overthrowing the leading nation of state sponsored terrorism, liberating people under an abusive regime, then that can’t be a bad thing. As we know from events like World War 2, making the world safer sometimes comes at a high cost.
But that’s just it, there is a cost, a cost like bombs falling on a school killing innocent children. In a country in which government is of the people, by the people, and for the people, we all share in that. And as Christians whose religion is symbolized by a cross, we are to struggle with that.
I raise this not to tell us how we ought to feel about this war, but to acknowledge that many of us don’t know what to feel. If this war will make our world safer then great, but we also lament the cost, because the cross reminds us that God is found among the suffering. We can’t be so worshipful of power that we lose our compassion. God’s glory is not seen in worldly power but in the restraint of power, in sacrificial love.
God’s power is the ability to redeem suffering. That’s what we mean by having a cross raised before us. That’s what we mean when we wear a cross. It says we not only believe in that power of God, but we join with God in the work of redeeming suffering.
And that leads to another reason we might say, “Come down from the cross.” In fact, it could be an even greater reason we say that, because Jesus invites us to join him in carrying a cross. The cross is not just a symbol of what Christ did for us, it is also a symbol of the way we are called to live.
Jesus said, “If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24) This was probably one of the most crowd-thinning statements Jesus made. In the gospels the expression “disciples” is not limited to the twelve. It referred to large groups that dedicated themselves to following Jesus. But when he talked about a cross, the crowds thinned out.
And they still do today. Jesus calls us to identify with the suffering. He calls us to welcome the immigrant and foreigner as the Torah commanded. He calls us advocate for the racial minorities as he did for the Samaritans. He calls us to defend the causes of the poor and underprivileged as he did when he said, “When you do it to the least of these you do it unto me.” And many say, “Come down from the cross.”
Let us worship you. Let us pray to you. Let us serve you, but to a point. Don’t ask us to sacrifice our treasures, or sacrifice our convictions, or sacrifice our rights. Just come down from the cross.
But he doesn’t, because he’s not on his cross. He’s on ours. He doesn’t even ask us to carry our own crosses because he already has. That’s done. He asks us to be willing to help others carry their crosses. That is the message of Jesus’ passion.
**Closing illustration of MLK…